Podcast With Walt Piecyk Of BTIG About The State Of Telecom And Media

The new Apple iPhone 7 is displayed at the Apple Store at the Grove in Los Angeles on Friday, Sept. 16, 2016. The latest Apple Watches and iPhone 7 were released Friday. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Last week, I spoke with TMT analyst Walt Piecyk of BTIG about the state of telecom and media as we start 2017. The full podcast is here.

Walt follows the sector closely and has always impressed me with his thoughtful posts as well as good insights when he appears on CNBC and Bloomberg. In our discussion, we got a chance to go into a lot of detail on the following topics:

Whether Charter (CHTR) is a good potential acquisition target for Verizon (VZ) and why.

Why exactly Verizon is pursuing Charter and other large potential acquisitions they could make instead of Charter.

The state of Verizon’s push into content and digital ads with AOL and now Yahoo (YHOO).

Why Verizon chose until a week after the Super Bowl to launch its unlimited data plan and how this plan competitively positions them against T-Mobile (TMUS), AT&T (T) and Sprint (S).

Whether Sprint and T-Mobile will be the first companies to test the appetite of the new Trump Administration and regulatory bodies for a large scale acquisition/merger. Why this potential merger may or may not happen.

Whether Dish will build out a network of its own with its spectrum or decide to sell.

How all the major carriers and cable companies are pushing forward in their expansion to 5G and which smaller firms might be most likely to be acquired as this expansion happens.

The attitude of the FCC as well as the DOJ to a potential wave of consolidation.

Where does Apple (AAPL)’s stock go from here as we approach the Fall launch of the iPhone 8?

We had an opportunity to drill down into enormous detail on all these questions in the nearly hour-long discussion. Here is the full podcast.